


Tall Tales

by maximum_overboner



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Dark Comedy, F/M, HEAVY on the smug smug banter, a fun character study!, a little public indecency, absolutely CRACKLING with sexual tension, heavy on the banter, morbidly funny hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 14:07:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14058624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximum_overboner/pseuds/maximum_overboner
Summary: Varric loves telling a story just as much as Hawke loves hearing them. No matter how wild, outlandish, or flat-out false they may be.





	Tall Tales

**Author's Note:**

> now THIS is unexpected! i had a sudden hankering for varric

Varric considered himself a wordsmith. The people who knew him considered him a silver-tongued charmer, eager with a drink and a tale. The people who didn’t know him considered him a sleazy peddler of cheap falsehoods. He had no pretensions about himself so he was more than happy to consider all three one and the same and would cycle through all options when asked about himself, as well as inventing several others that happened to be altogether more interesting, extravagant and untrue.

Bulging purple prose, monosyllabic spatterings of words, writhing turns of phrase and, quite frankly, more commas than one man should be comfortable with. The quill danced in his fingers. Every sentence primed and every period a bolt to lock it in place, to stop the words drifting into one another in an endless sea of text. He placed his quill to his side, gently lifted the paper and read back his own work, used to the raucous noise of The Hanged Man.

“Wow,” he said, in awe of his own skill, “this turned out really bad. I gotta lay off the booze when I do this stuff.”

He scrunched up the parchment, threw it at his feet and started again. He wrote feverishly, his brows knit in concentration. He examined his new page.

“Nope,” he chuckled to himself, “still drunk.”

He threw away that page as well. Sometimes it was a matter of looking at what you already had and cutting your losses. He could resume tomorrow. The bosoms would still be bouncing and the heroes hairy and masculine, but with the benefit of being perfectly legible to boot. He ordered another drink.

“You’ve not finished the first one,” the barman grunted.

“And you don’t have all your teeth,” Varric said, pushing his coins towards him, “but sometimes life works out in weird ways.”

The barman scowled, took the coin and clattered the drink on the table next to Varric. He swigged, cringing at the taste. “What kind of horse piss is this?”

“All you’re getting,” the barman grunted back.

“I’m a loyal customer.”

“You’re a loyal pain in the arse and it’s all we’ve got.”

Varric sighed. He counted down the seconds in his mind. The door swung open. Varric smirked, not needing to look around. He heard grumbling and several very wet footsteps.

“Varric,” Hawke said, “you would not believe the afternoon I had.”

“Good, right?”

Varric turned around. Drenched head to toe in blood, as if doused, was Hawke, the whites of her eyes peeping out from the streaks of thick, gelatinous crimson.

“Yes, Varric,” she said, “I was so thrilled everything went well that I decided to slit a sand howler’s throat and bathe in its fluids, having a lovely, splendid time dancing and chanting and have lots of cult orgies with my many many husbands.”

“Why didn’t you invite me?”

Hawke sat herself down next to him, every movement sounding like slapped mud. Varric tried and failed to suppress his laughter.

“How was I to know the mage I was following couldn’t take a harmless joke?” she bemoaned. “Everyone must laugh at themselves lest they grow too big-headed. We won’t have to worry about that, however, as I had to fill his full of holes.”

“What was the joke?”

“He transformed his unwilling sister into an abomination, something about ‘eternal youth and beauty’...”

Hawke rolled her eyes and Varric with her. “People never learn,” he mumbled.

“I said ‘well, you’ve made her twice as dead and thrice as ugly,’ and then he started throwing spears made of time at me.”

“Ouch. Tough crowd.”

“Very. It took me thirty minutes to kill him. I’m very glad he was crying otherwise he may have hit me. I need--”

A drink sat in front of Hawke.

“I ordered it when I heard you walking to the door,” Varric said coolly.

“You recognize the sound of my footsteps?”

“If I hear blood in shoes I just assume it’s you. Haven’t been wrong so far.”

“How sweet. And horrifying.”

Hawke wiped her mouth daintily, before cursing and rubbing her face on the cleanest part of her sleeve. She took a long, long swig. She gagged.

“How strong is this stuff?”

“Illegally.”

“Ooh, lovely. I take back any criticism. Cheers.”

They clinked mugs, drinking and making noises of complaint together.

“You know, this place could use another lick of paint,” Varric said with all the practised ease of someone who had been looking forward to this. “Some new furniture. Maybe a cleansing fire or two, to get the roaches. Still, it could be worse. I ever tell you about this place’s history?”

“Many, many, many times. None of them true.”

“Well, good news, this one is. Picture this...”

Hawke propped her hand on her soggy chin, allowing herself to be drawn into his charming, ridiculous world.

“I was outside, minding my own business,” he said, indicating he was doing nothing of the sort, “when suddenly I hear a commotion from the inside. Well, you know me, I can never resist the chance to play hero--”

“I know you’re saying that to give me a chance to object,” Hawke said, “but I don’t have any objections. I think you’re right.”

Varric, for the first time in a long while, stuttered. He quickly found his footing, laughing it off.

“Flattery will get you everywhere. So I look and I see these guys beating on the poor, helpless owner. They wanted his money. He was old, he was blind, he…”

Varric thought.

“He had no arms.”

“Pulling pints must have been difficult. Adept with his feet?”

“No, he didn’t have legs, either.”

“Oh. Oh, of course. How silly of me.”

“Well, I walk in and the atmosphere dies there and then. The biggest, meanest bastard of the bunch turns around, looking like an ogre in a shirt, and says, ‘get out of here, ya damned nug-humping bastard’! And you know how I get when I’m called that--”

“I don’t,” Hawke said bemusedly.

“Of course you do.”

“I don’t, I’ve never heard you called that. I’ve heard you called far worse but never a nug-humper. I think you would be upset because it isn’t very creative at all. You would be annoyed because there’s so much to work with and they settled for the same old insult they would call any dwarf. Not a single mention of your crooked nose or your beard hair migrating to your chest.”

Varric blinked because she was entirely right, but played it off with a wave of the hand.

“Well, Hawke, you have to understand, this was a different time in my life. I was young, out of control and tremendously good looking. It’s easy to get fired up over little things when you’re like that. I mean, you would know.”

“I would,” she said, raising a brow. “Continue.”

“-- So he said ‘get out of here, ya damned crooked-nosed, hairy chested, nug-humping bastard! Also, your mother was an alcoholic and you’ve put on weight’. And you know how I get when I’m called that--”

“Oh, you get absolutely furious.”

“-- So I look around the bar and there’s…”

He paused to think.

“... Thirty guys.”

Hawke laughed, speckling blood onto the bar. “Thirty men? Are you about to tell me you took on thirty men? Nobody could take on thirty men!”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Varric said, entirely unruffled, “because this is the point where I tell you I got mixed up with another one of my amazing stories. It was actually ten men.”

“Ten men? I’m not sure where you’re going with this but rest assured I’m already very impressed by your truthful recounting of it.”

“What if I told you we all became overcome with lust and took one another there and then?”

“Then I would still be impressed, but for other reasons entirely. Perhaps even envious. But it’s a tad unrealistic, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe my reputation caught up with me and they had to bend me over a barrel there and then,” he said, with a wiggling of his eyebrows.

“And had it?”

“No. The first guy charges at me, pow!” He mimed unloading Bianca, his face contorted into a triumphant expression. “Right through the skull. The second guy comes at me, bam!”

He mimed firing another shot, squinting to mimic aiming.

“Through the heart! The third--”

Hawke put her hands up, taking another long swig of her drink and shuddering at the taste. “Now hold on-- excuse me for a moment, this goes down like gravel-- you mean to tell me that these ten men came at you individually? Nobody can reload a crossbow that quickly!”

“Nobody could reload a normal crossbow that quickly,” he corrected, “but Bianca is a top of the line machine. Aren’t you, girl?”

They looked at the crossbow by his feet, as if it would answer.

“Now Hawke, I’m just telling you what happened,” he said with an air of affable sleaze, “believe it, or don’t, that’s up to you. I’m just here to pass on the information.”

“Well, Varric, I will admit the rest of it was watertight but I’m afraid you’ve lost me. I just can’t believe that ten men would charge you one at a time at perfect shooting distance. I’m afraid you may be lying to me.”

Varric put his hand to his chest, looking away. “That’s a hurtful thing to say.”

“I know, Varric, but I have to be honest.”

“Well, I’m about to make you feel like shit, ‘cause get what? These ten men? Soldiers. And you know why they were at the bar?”

“Why, pray tell, were they at the bar?”

“All of them were corrupt city guards,” he said, a gleam in his eye, “resting after a big job. They got in a scuffle with local smugglers but all of the smugglers were dwarves--”

“But not as handsome as you,” Hawke said, only half-joking. Varric looked at her.

“Hawke, give me some credit. I want to keep this story believable. Of course they weren’t. So as I was saying, when it came down to swordfights…”

Varric patted his thigh. Hawke’s gaze lingered, both of them noticing it.

“Well, it’s easier to go for the legs,” he continued. “Not that you’ll hear dwarves talk about it if you ask them. Pride thing,” he whispered, “very taboo.”

“I imagine the population of Orzammar is howling your name in anguish as we speak.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time. The third one, dead! The fourth, now he was a tricky one, he came from behind.”

“I’m to assume you dispatched that one in an extravagant and unrealistic fashion?”

“It’s not unrealistic, Hawke,” he said with his eyes closed and a convincing gravity, “if it happened. I shot a wooden beam and the bolt ricocheted, so I deflected it with my wrist guard back into his eyes. I looked the fifth dead in the eye, swung Bianca over my shoulder--”

“Now I think you’re making fun of me.”

“-- Turned around and shot him without looking. Number six pissed himself, number seven had a heart attack, number eight leapt outta the window, number nine fell on his own sword in terror and number ten, the smartest of the bunch, got on his hands and knees. Oh, Master Varric,” he said, putting on his worst falsetto and clutching his hands to one another, “oh, Master Varric, spare us! Spare me, I am but a humbled, injured fool, I’m so sorry! Please, I beg of you, take my gold and let me live another day!”

Hawke put her hand to her chin, pondering his true story. “You are telling this as if you are the hero,” she said, “but from where I am sitting, or perhaps from where I am soon to be lying on the floor, this alcohol is very strong, you kicked your way into a bar, killed a few gravely injured men and started extorting money. In fact, you immediately performed the very act you shot multiple men over. Did the old man receive his coin?”

“Of course he did. I’m a scoundrel, not a monster. With a little taken off for my services, of course.”

“Of course.”

Varric rested his elbow on the bar, experienced enough in drunken revelling to avoid the suspicious and unpleasant stain. “And all the best heroes are morally grey, Hawke. Look, I can’t expect you to know the ins and outs of writing. What, do you think I just sit here all day, get drunk and bullshit?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re right, but it’s the principle. And it’s very rude to interrupt when a storyteller is plying his craft.”

“But Varric, you make it so, so easy.”

He laughed, throwing his head back and scrunching his eyes shut, his chest heaving and his throat exposed. A great, teeth-baring belly laugh, perhaps the only honest thing about him. “Don’t make me laugh, I’m getting to the sad part!”

“Oh, you shooting those strangers wasn’t the sad part?”

“It wasn’t because I didn’t care about them. But the old man? Now that’s where the emotional guts of the story are.”

“What of the literal guts I am drenched in?”

“A bonus. He clutched me by the collar. ‘Lord Varric,’ he wheezed, with his dying breath--”

“It was Master Varric a moment ago.”

“-- ‘Lord Varric. I am dying, and when I perish so too shall my business. Nobody in Kirkwall has more sense than you. Nobody in Kirkwall is as witty, or smart, or business savvy’--”

“Oh, good grief…”

Varric dramatically clutched his throat, throwing an arm to his forehead and putting on his best rasp. “‘Please, tell me, you stallion, tell me what I must do with this place. My children must eat'.”

“It was very kind of him to compliment you in his very long, very elaborate dying breath. The most I’ve ever got was a ‘you bitch!’ and then he popped like a balloon. Your injured old man just delivered an entire dramatic soliloquy with time for applause and rose-tossing. Actually, it was so long that you could have fetched help and saved his life.”

“And leave an old man when he was saying something both sad and dramatic? I couldn’t. It was very moving,” Varric nodded. “I shed tears. Three of them.”

“You? Crying? I thought you were trying to make these believable.”

Varric suddenly looked serious. Solemn. He sighed, taking a long drink, his brows knit. “I looked him in the eye, and I…”

He looked away. Hawke, now genuinely concerned, went to place a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t do that,” he said quietly, “this coat is Orlaisian leather and the blood will ruin it.”

“Oh. Oh, right. Sorry. I forget some people don’t just… Kill others when they need new things.”

Varric nodded at her. “Looking at someone like that, that old man, it’s hard not to think to all the things you’ve seen. All the things you’ve done. All the things you’ve lost. So I looked at him, and I said...”

His face split into a grin, his eyes narrowing.

“Make this place a brothel and call it ‘The Hung Man’. The shock killed him then and there.”

Hawke cackled, her booze sloshing over the rim of her mug. “You bastard, you had me going at the end! How long have you been waiting to say that?”

“Do you think I just hold onto anecdotes to tell you? Someone thinks highly of herself.”

“Two years?”

“Three.”

“Well,” she said, shedding her drenched overcoat and settling for her vest, “it wasn’t worth it.”

“Everyone’s a critic.”

He sighed, tracing his finger along the rim of his mug, a drunken smile playing on his lips.

“You should be paying me for that, you know. I’m an in-demand storyteller. I’m not tall, I’m not dark, but you have to admit; I’m damn handsome.”

“Admit? To whom? You?”

“Please, Hawke, I have to bear this burden every day. Have some compassion.”

The barman, who had been listening in the entire time, let out a noise of frustration.

“Are you two always so insufferably smug?”

“Now now, barkeep,” Hawke said, “remember who pays your wages around here. I mean, it’s not me, but I’m sure it’s someone that would agree with me. And I’ll have you know you’re in the presence of a renowned and respected hero! A little courtesy wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Trust you to brag about yourself,” Varric laughed.

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about me. I’m saving the egotism for the play you write about my life.”

Varric was quiet. They looked at one another, the air that hung between them warm and heady.

“Huh,” he said.

“A ‘thank you’ is normal, but I suppose a ‘huh’ is fine as well. Take a compliment, Varric, it will add years to your life.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about old age in our line of work,” he joked, avoiding it, “more rancid booze for the lady?”

“Varric, you sweet talker,” she crooned, letting him, “how could I ever resist?”  
  
She reached into her coin purse. Varric tapped her shoulder to get her attention, already laying more coins on the bar. “Ah, let me.”

“How uncharacteristically generous of you.”

“Consider it payment for listening to my stories.”

“Just moments ago you wanted me to pay you,” she teased.

“Yeah, but I wasn’t as drunk then.”

Hawke shrugged, conceding the point even as they held one another’s gaze for a second too long.

“You know,” Varric said, “if this were one of my stories, this would be the part where the protagonist opens up about all his troubles after getting wistful and chugging one too many cups of Antivan brandy.”

“This isn’t one of your stories and you aren’t drinking Antivan brandy”

“I know. I think ahead. It’s too expensive for me to get shitfaced on the stuff so my dignity lives to see another day. What am I, made of money? And I didn’t think of myself as the protagonist. But Hawke, I’m a sucker for a cliché. Care to hear about all of my hidden, interesting troubles that I’ve never told anyone? My short-tempered brooding?”

“That joke isn't funny, even when you say it. But yes, I do believe I would. You know everything about me, from my family history to my unsightly rashes, so I do believe I’m owed a little something. Go on then, get gut-spilling. A dark past of thievery and swashbuckling? A torrid affair under the moonlight? Excessive use of hair conditioner?”

“Oh, all that and more. I’m a very interesting character.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“No,” he said wryly, taking a long drink. “But wouldn’t it be fun if I did?”

“I’ll suppose I’ll just have to ponder that as we get drunk,” Hawke sighed. “Speaking of which, is this used to clean the blood off walls? It’s barely fit for human consumption.”

“... Wow.”

“Or dwarven consumption,” she added, soothing his play-offence.  
  
“I know what you mean,” Varric grimaced. “It’s got a real… Kick. Notes of cinnamon, apple...”

He swirled the mug, pretending to be one of the Orlesian sommeliers he saw swanning about Hightown.

“... Vomit.”

Hawke smirked. She looked down at herself and sighed, picking off the biggest flecks of blood with her nails and flicking it to the floor. Varric noted that she took care not to sully Bianca. He shrugged off his jacket and handed it over, warm and still smelling of him. Hawke looked at it as if she didn’t know what a jacket was.

“Well,” he said, “take it. My arms get enough exercise as-is.”

“So I’ve heard.”

She took the jacket from him. She put it on. A far better, and far dryer, replacement for her own ruined coat.

“I will wash this, you know,” she said, feeling the leather. “I’ll get it back to you spick and span. Better than brand new, in fact. I don’t intend to flounce off with your best jacket.”

“Keep it.”

“Really? Whatever for?”

“I don’t know. Give me five minutes, I’m sure I can come up with a reason.”

Hawke looked at him, baffled, wrapping it around herself.

“Are you… Absolutely sure about this? In all the years I’ve known you I’ve never seen you without it.”

“Ah, screw the coat. It’s fake anyway,” he lied. “I mean, where are you gonna get Orlesian leather in Kirkwall? Really, keep it, I insist.”

“Well, I…”

She thought of something to say.

“Thank you,” she said plainly. Varric wasn’t sure how to respond.

“It’s very comfortable,” she remarked, putting Varric at ease again. “A touch too small, but I’m sure it will make a lovely dressing gown for pottering about the house in. Failing that I can go nude and petrify any encroaching apostates with a sudden updraft.”

“Now that, I would like to see.”

“Which part? The part where I flit about the house in domestic bliss, or the part where I traipse around town, naked, in your jacket?”

“Well, I--”

She stood in front of him. He caught sight of her curves, her breasts. She leaned down to look him in the eye, giving him a view down her shirt.

“You’re drunk,” he said tactfully. “And you’ve had a long, hard day.”

“Don’t go bringing innuendos into it, Varric, I can barely contain myself as it is. And I’ll have you know I’m perfectly capable of making life-ruining mistakes when I am sober, thank you very much. Of course, I’m not here to make you uncomfortable, so if you aren’t interested we can play this off as a drunken mishap in the morning and laugh about it for years to come.”

“Well, I didn’t say that, either.”

“Good. I get to do this, then.”

Varric’s breath hitched as Hawke toyed with his cock through his leggings, his long shirt not doing much to preserve his modesty. Varric’s eyes darted around, to see if they were being watched.

“Hawke--”

“Oh, please,” she purred, reeking of alcohol, “as if they aren’t used to this sort of thing by now. They don’t care.”

“Yeah, well, I do. There’s a perfectly good room just up the stairs. And, no offence, you need a bath.”

“None taken. But,” she purred at his ear, “you aren’t the sort to kiss and tell, are you?”

“Oh, absolutely. But for you, I think I can make an exception.”

“And you aren’t just saying that because you happen to be staring at my breasts?”

“Not at all,” Varric said, a heady edge to his voice. “You’re so bad minded, Hawke, it doesn’t suit you.”

Hawke grabbed his hand and squashed it to her breast. With a laugh they darted off of their seats, leaving their drinks. Hawke took the quickest bath of her life and stormed into his chambers wearing his coat.

Hawke clicked the door shut. They nodded at each other in profound and mutual respect, then launched themselves at one another. Varric gripped her face in his hands and kissed her, both of them stumbling over their feet and onto the bed, panting and sighing, moaning and desperate, but not once shutting up.

And, for a few lovely moments, Varric could pretend there was something worth having underneath his shimmer.


End file.
